Historian Kevin Impellizeri shares a story of a video game controversy to his friends: Elford Stephens, Phil Thomas, and Andy Hunter. In today's episode, we go back to the Postal series to look at Postal’s 2003 sequel: the “anti-PC” PC game Postal 2. We look at its development, the fortunes of its maker (Running with Scissors), and how the company handled criticism.

Also, Kevin makes an argument for why Postal 2 might be the first "MAGA video game."

Topics discussed include:  the logistics of using a cat as a silencer, whether Gary Coleman represented everything wrong with America, and Running with Scissors’ unsurprising embrace of the Alt-Right.

Correction: based on Steam achievement statistics, by making it through Wednesday, Kevin managed to surpass 75.5% of Postal 2 players (https://steamcommunity.com/stats/223470/achievements).

For more on Postal III’s rough production, check out Matt McMuscles’ “What Happened?”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJnivzm-WjA.
For a detailed analysis of the entire Postal series, check out Noah Caldwell Gervais’ video  “Postal, Hatred, and Weighing the Worth of Asshole Simulators”: https://youtu.be/kivtv6wabBk. 

Theme Music: Occam's Sikhwee by Sikh Knowledge (Free Music Archive: https://bit.ly/33G4sLO), used under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 US (https://bit.ly/33JXogQ) 

More info, including show notes and sources at http://scandalousgamespodcast.wordpress.com.